“We can stop this, we can turn it around and in fact, I am right now incredibly, incredibly optimistic,” he said.

Cruz offered two paths for the movement to follow, one short-term and one long. His short-term plan, he said, is largely directed to the Republican majority in the House of Representatives — what he called “the last bastion standing between us and oblivion.”

“The first thing I would urge every Republican in the House of Representatives [to do] is stop reading the New York Times,” he said.

The Texas Republican further urged Republican House members to “stop bad things” that would harm the country, calling out in particular gun control, increased spending, higher taxes and burdensome economic regulation.

Cruz added that Republicans should use “leverage points” to get what they want done. The party should be willing, he said, to send the government into partial or temporary shutdown over the coming debt ceiling and continuing resolution negotiations.

Over the long term, Cruz stressed Republicans must “win the argument” and become the party of growth as a means to grow jobs, reduce debt, reduce poverty and increase revenues.

“You want to pay back debt you get the economy roaring and people back to work. Four percent growth per decade, 3 million people would rise up from poverty and be standing on their own,” he said. “We need to be unapologetically, relentlessly the party growth. And the policies of the Obama administration not only don’t produce growth, they kill jobs.”

Cruz returned to his long-standing message of “opportunity” as the second plank in his long-term plan for Republicans’ resurgence.

“Every domestic policy we as conservatives think about, talk about, fight about should be focused like a laser on opportunity. On easing the means of ascent up the economic ladder. That should be the focus of every single policy,” he said. “Our policies work. The other side’s don’t.”